Reflections on Adaptive Behavior: Essays in Honor of J. E. R. Staddon

by Innis, Nancy K.

• ISBN13: 9780262090445
• ISBN10: 0262090449
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-07-01
• Publisher: MIT PRESS

Summary

John Staddon has devoted his long and distinguished career to the study of the adaptive function and mechanisms of learning. He did his graduate work at the famous Skinner Lab at Harvard in the early 1960s (supervised by Richard Herrnstein, who did his doctoral work with B. F. Skinner), but his work can be characterized as theoretical behaviorism. Staddon, now at Duke University, believes that experimental analysis is never enough to make sense of behavior and that "theoretical imagination" is also required. Staddon's theoretical imagination has distinguished his work over the years and has influenced the field. Staddon is not afraid to deviate from the norm: when psychologists were maintaining their distance from behavioral psychology, Staddon was promoting optimality theories. Optimality theories in psychology are now commonplace. In this volume, Staddon's colleagues and former students discuss topics that have been important in his work: behavioral ability and choice, memory, time and models (the subject of his work at Harvard), and behaviorism. They also reflect on Staddon's influence on their own work and the evolution of their thinking on these topics. Contributors: Giulio Bolacchi, Daniel T. Cerutti, Mircea Ioan Chelaru, J. Mark Cleaveland, Robert H. I. Dale, Rebecca A. Dixon, Valentin Dragoi, Stephen Gray, Jennifer J. Higa, John M. Horner, Nancy K. Innis, Mandar S. Jog, Richard Keen, John E. Kello, Eric Macaux, Armando Machado, John C. Malone, Jr., Kazuchika Manabe, Susan R. Perry, Alliston K. Reid.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. vii
Acknowledgments	p. ix
Theoretical Behaviorist: John E. R. Staddon	p. 1
Behavioral Variability and Choice	p. 21
Making Analogies Work: A Selectionist Model of Choice Behavior	p. 23
Variation and Selection in Response Structures	p. 51
Control of Response Variability: Call and Pecking Location in Budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulatus)	p. 87
Rules of Thumb for Choice Behavior in Pigeons	p. 101
Memory, Time, and Models	p. 123
Choice and Memory	p. 125
The Spatial Memory of African Elephants (Loxodonta africana): Durability, Interference, and Response Biases	p. 143
Interval Timing and Memory: Breaking the Clock	p. 171
Learning Mechanisms in Multiple-Time-Scale Theory	p. 193
Mechanisms of Adaptive Behavior: Beyond the Usual Suspects	p. 215
Behaviorism	p. 235
Varieties of the Behaviorist Experience: Histories of John E. R. Staddon	p. 237
Santayana Told Us, or The Prevalence of Radical Behaviorism	p. 247
The End of Psychology: What Can We Expect at the Limits of Inquiry?	p. 269
Reflections on I-O Psychology and Behaviorism	p. 291
Behaviorism and the Social Sciences	p. 313
A New Paradigm for the Integration of the Social Sciences	p. 315
References	p. 355
List of Contributors	p. 387
Epilogue: Nancy Karen Innis, 1941-2004	p. 389
Index	p. 391
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